The 4 trends which have engulfed marketing this year

A couple of decades ago, a marketing plan was simple to say the least. It might have been comprised of some sort of leaflet approach – attempting to target people as granular as possible through traditional postal marketing.

Suffice to say, those days are gone. While postal marketing certainly does still play a part, there’s no doubt that the internet has taken over and turned marketing plans on their head. The fast-paced nature of the online world means that we’re used to seeing different trends each and every year but now, the following four are regarded as the ones that you simply have to consider if you are in charge of marketing for your company. It’s the type of approach which gurus such as Brian Dougherty are preaching and if possible, simply have to be implemented in the modern-day marketing plan.

The personal experience

Let’s start with the most powerful tool available to the modern-day marketer; personalization.

Targeting a group who are actually interested in your products has always been the main aim of marketing, but now it’s become more possible than ever before.

The fact that you can effectively trail a user through the web, taking advantage of tracking pixels and all sorts of other technology to show them something they may have had interest in before, is hugely powerful.

Not only this, some websites are now able to show different versions of their pages based on the user’s past behavior. Furthermore, this behavior doesn’t have to have been through their website – they may have collected the data through their display advertising which again highlights just how much information companies can now have available.

Multi-point marketing

Any company who is just targeting that final stage of the buying cycle is missing a trick. The term “content is king” might be a cliché, but it’s relevant in today’s market.

Targeting customers at the very first stage of the buying cycle, and attempting to stay with them throughout, is what the successful 2016 business will do in their marketing plan. They will address a customer’s initial problems, and go from there.

Multi-purchase points

The days of only buying from your website are also on their way out. Google Shopping, Amazon, apps and a whole host of other technologies mean that your products should be available on a variety of mediums.

More and more social media channels are attempting to incorporate shopping into their experience and considering the targeting (and ultimately personalization, if we hone in on our first point) they have at their disposal, it puts businesses in a very strong position indeed.

The rise of the app

We’ve touched on apps already, but it really is worthy of its own separate section. Apps just aren’t a way to play games or kill time – they can be an incredible source of revenue for businesses.

From providing buying opportunities within the app, to targeting customers through adverts in other apps, the potential is immense.

The fact that apps are starting to become streamed (in other words, they don’t have to be downloaded to be used), just makes them even more powerful. It all means that app-marketing is only going one way.